


The Captives

by LucyLovecraft



Category: Potop | The Deluge (1974), Potop | The Deluge - Henryk Sienkiewicz, Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Andrzej Kmicic is a slutty subby bottom, Dom/sub, First Time, I think Kmicic invented some kind of subby singularity where he practically ended up topping, Love/Hate, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Praise Kink, References to Bogusław not caring at all about consent, Shameless Smut, Warnings for French language, Wigless Bogusław (Mild Horror)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 02:59:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17113169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyLovecraft/pseuds/LucyLovecraft
Summary: “My God,” Bogusław said, marvelling. “So you admit you want me.”“Yes,” Kmicic rasped, tears in his eyes. He longed to shut them, to hide himself from that dark gaze. “Oh God!Oleńka… Michał…I wanted—”“But they're not here,” Bogusław chided gently. “I am. And you wantme.”





	The Captives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ankalime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ankalime/gifts).



> This is set in a brief deviation from canon in which Bogusław does not immediately escape Kmicic's kidnapping attempt and is held as a captive.
> 
> Bogusław slips into French during sex because it's fun, but otherwise he and Kmicic are generally speaking German throughout the duration, per B's preference.
> 
> Bogusław calling Kmicic "fair cousin" is courtesy of the Curtin translation.
> 
> Also I do know that's not a trap that would hold a wolf. Just saying.
> 
> I stole one line "It's not courage to resist me; it's courage to accept me" from _Ravenous_ which is the single greatest surreal comedy about a gay cannibal trying to seduce his bf, and is frankly my favourite movie. Don't know what that says about me.

Wigless, clad in rough peasant’s clothes, the prisoner looked nothing like the prince who had so casually dismissed the fate of a nation. He remained seated on the rough-hewn chair as Kmicic entered, acknowledging him with an inclination of his head.

“It is so good of you to come, cousin,” Bogusław said in German.

“What do you want?” Kmicic replied in the same language.

Kmicic’s hands twitched at his sides as he fought not to pace. Even the sight of this man made him feel as though hot coals were sewn under his skin.

Bogusław drank all this in with a look of mild amusement.

“Do sit down. Or run me through. But please do one or the other. You seem agitated.”

“And how could I not be when I must endure your company, traitor?”

“You have inflicted me upon yourself. I can hardly feel sorry for you. _I_ do not enjoy the experience.”

“Tell me what you want, then!”

“Do you truly intend to stand there the entire time?” Bogusław inquired.

“I do not intend to linger in your company!” Kmicic wished it were not such a torment to meet this man’s eyes, but he would not give him the satisfaction of looking away. “And if you don’t tell me what this is about then I shall leave.”

“Well then, I shall get to the point: it is most inhumane to keep me mewed up like this.” Bogusław said. “I should have thought you possessed a higher sense of honor than to treat a man of my rank thus.”

“Your family took what last hopes of honour I might have claimed. With that gone, I can only treat you as you deserve!”

Bogusław raised one eyebrow—immaculate, still, even after these long weeks. No art had ever been required to achieve such perfect supercility. When all the paint and powder was gone, Bogusław himself remained.

“You seem very fond of these moral extremes,” the prince noted. “Have things always been so simple for you? You were a famous soldier long before this particular drama began. I wonder that you did not come into a more practical view of things, even if nuance eluded you. Or is this the fervour of a convert?”

The words struck home, and so terrible was Kmicic's pang of loss that his breath caught. His next words came out in a hoarse rasp: “Have you nothing better to do than spout poison?”

Bogusław gave an elegant shrug, hands spread to indicate his surroundings in a gesture that said, “ _With what else could I occupy my time?”_

“So you want… what? A walk in the woods?” Kmicic demanded. How could the man sit looking so insouciant, when the weight of his sins should have bowed him to the ground? Kmicic staggered beneath the weight of his own. “You would condemn an entire nation to carry the yoke, and you ask me for the liberty of a stroll? You dare ask clemency of me?”

“I was hoping for reason, but alas, it seems I aimed too high.”

“What relief would you ever offer me, were our places reversed?” Kmicic cried.

“I think you would be too stubborn to ask.”

Kmicic stared, red with rage.

“After all,” Bogusław continued, “men with nothing else to cling to often choose petty pride and professed virtue over what would best ease their sufferings.”

“You make what is right sound like the coward’s choice!” Kmicic started forward, fists clenched. “Only a man who knows nothing of godliness could dismiss the fight against sin so easily!”

“Sin, is it?” Bogusław steepled his fingers, watching Kmicic with dark eyes. “Oh, I do not dismiss your struggles. Most men do not even have the bravery to let themselves be tempted by the greater sins. Easier to live a small, mean life of virtue than to dream of greater transgressions. But such men could never be more than mere insects, and so they sacrifice nothing when they choose a preordained fate. A surrender is no fight at all. But you… you have the potential for such interesting possibilities that to deny them comes at no little cost. I wonder what you might have been had you stayed under the patronage of the Radziwiłłs.”

“Are—are you drunk, to speak so? Or has Lucifer taken lease of your tongue, heretic as you are?”

 _“_ And so we return again to your simple dichotomies. _Mon Dieu, quel ennui!”_ Bogusław sighed, shaking his head. “And yet”—he suddenly shot Kmicic a piercing glance—“I wonder what sins you struggle against. What gnaws at the roots of your soul, if power is no lure?”

“Wrath,” Kmicic said. Every inch of him trembled with the effort of restraint. He almost wished he had left his sabre at the door. Its weight at his hip was a whispered promise of simple, bloody peace and an end to all his torments to which Kmicic dared not listen.

“Oh, certainly. I can see _that_ with my own eyes. I marvel that you can sleep at all, hotheaded as you are! But then again” —he took in Kmicic's haggard face—“perhaps you don't.”

“And you are a monster of pride!”

Bogusław’s mouth twitched in a wry little smile, as if to say _“touché”_.

“But may I not appeal to _your_ pride?” he asked. “You have me as your prisoner, at least for now. If I were to humbly ask, as a prisoner, for a chance to breathe the free air, would you deny me outright? Perhaps I would deny you, but are you not striving to be better than a traitor such as myself?”

Bogusław, ever the avid duellist, watched with interest as his strike passed neatly under Kmicic’s guard.

“Deny me,” Bogusław said, following through, “and I suppose you may add petulance and cowardice to your sins.”

Andrzej Kmicic flung himself forward with a snarl, hands outstretched towards Bogusław’s bare throat. Yet even as he leapt for the kill some other force seized him and held him suspended in mid-motion, staring at Bogusław in a paroxysm of fascinated hatred.

“I should kill you right now!” Kmicic cried.

“And you want to, don’t you? What holds you back?” Bogusław asked, leaning forward, alive with interest. “Is it only that I’m your proof? The coin with which you’ll buy back your honour? You have the letters. Why not kill me, as you long to do?”

“It isn’t right!” Kmicic howled, hands clutching at his own hair. “Murdering prisoners… it’s the act of a brigand, with no respect for the laws of man and God.”

“But who would know?” Bogusław asked reasonably. Kmicic hardly seemed to realise that Bogusław was speaking to him anymore, caught between powers that would surely wrench his soul apart. “And who could blame you?”

“It’s not right!” Kmicic ground the heels of his hands against his brows, trying to quell the pounding in his skull. “A good man wouldn’t want to do such a thing!”

“I can hardly argue with that.” Bogusław leaned back in his chair. “But it does perhaps prove my point.”

“Point?” Kmicic dropped his hands, staring with the wild look of a caged beast prodded through the bars. “What point?”

“That you’re fighting to be something other than what you are.”

Kmicic’s blue eyes dulled with horror.

“All these things you long to do to me, Sir Cavalier... would any but a sinner want to do them?”

 _There!_ Bogusław had almost thought he’d imagined it before, but he was sure he’d seen it now: a chink in the armour. It was pitious to see the effect these words had, and Bogusław devoured every detail.

“Perhaps I might give you my word not to escape—though only for the duration of this little stroll. I would put myself wholly in your power. And thus we might test the limits of your resolve.”

“There’s no word of yours I could trust,” Kmicic rasped.

“I have killed men for implying far less than you have just said. But as we are kinsmen, I suppose I must forgive the slight,” Bogusław said, though his eyes added _“if only for now”_. “Since you do not trust me, you shall be my guard. You may cut me down if I try to escape. Come: grant my request.”

An agonised truce seemed to settle upon Kmicic’s soul. His hand gripped the hilt of his sabre, letting the familiar touch of cold steel calm his fevered blood.

“Then... give me your word of honour that you will make no attempt to flee, nor to alert any to your presence or identity, either by word or deed.”

“I do so swear, though only for the duration. And does now suit?” Not waiting for a response, Bogusław rose, pulling a heavy cloak about his shoulders.

“What?”

“If I am only to leave this place in your custody, I must await your leisure. Shall we go now?” Bogusław prompted again, watching Kmicic with a cat’s unwinking stare.

“If that… if that is what I must do in honour, then I shall do it,” Kmicic said thickly.

“It is very good of you, fair cousin.”

“Don’t call me that!” Kmicic spat. That, at least, was something he could find the words to protest.

Bogusław inclined his head.

Mouth working, Kmicic wheeled about, not wanting to see what triumph might show on Bogusław’s face.

He threw open the door and strode out into the cold morning, and Bogusław followed him like his sins.

 

The woods were still and silent. Frost had hidden brittle crystals in the damp earth that broke under their feet.

Kmicic forced Bogusław to walk before him. Only a fool would have done otherwise, and feeling Bogusław’s eyes upon him had made his skin crawl. Yet now he had nothing with which to distract him from the agonies of his conscience, not when one of their chief architects walked before him.

 _He is my shame,_ Kmicic thought, then shook his head, limbs twitching as though longing to physically rip the thought from his mind and cast it away. Or to run, perhaps, faster than guilt could follow. Anything, _anything_ would be better than to lose himself to such thoughts!

The cold air stung as he breathed in and out, in and out. He focused on breath. He focused on each next step. He tried to think of Oleńka’s loving smile, but he could only see her as he remembered her that last time: revulsion on her face and doom in her eyes.

_She will know I am not a monster incapable of repentance! Oh, Oleńka! My heart’s light, my soul’s truth—if only you believe me then I shall surely be saved._

He saw her, tall and slender, a goddess in immovable marble. Had he truly been permitted to hold her in his arms and kiss her? Had she truly ever looked upon him and loved him? It seemed impossible: a dream of another life.

_I have not broken my oath of love, even if all my other oaths have broken me! I could bring him before you, make him confess all the horror his kin have done—what they’ve made me do, poor dupe as I am! And if miracles can still be in this fallen world, perhaps you will smile at me again as you once did. Perhaps you will love me as you once did. Oh, only look upon me with kindness in your eyes, my Diana, and I will be freed of this curse forever!_

_Cursed._ Kmicic’s gaze fixed on Bogusław’s back, and again he could see nothing else. That dark figure grew and grew in his mind, until the trees had dwindled to passing shades and his own body seemed untethered from the living world.

_Do not think of him! Would he not be glad to know how he commands your thoughts, even as his family commanded your sword and soul?_

_My sword… what shame it has brought me. Far better if I had never wielded one at all! Or if Wołodyjowski had struck a kinder blow and let me die a clean death in the mud._

A glitter of steel under grey skies. A flash of yellow hair. That first, sunshower smile when Michał Wołodyjowski had finally begun to see him as something other than a foe.

_My God, it would have been no shame to die at his hands. What a true mercy stroke it would have been. If only I had known to ask for it! All I wanted to be worthy of his gift, of his esteem, of his friendship!_

If only he might find favour in Wołodyjowski’s eyes again. Surely to God he could have that, at least?

_Once, he thought well of me. He believed I could be better than what I am. He did not know me, but I so wanted to be what he believed I could be!_

Bogusław’s voice came back to him: _“I wonder what sins you struggle against. What gnaws at the roots of your soul?”_

 _My God,_ Kmicic thought, despairing, _when he is dead, will I be free?_

Even made prisoner, the malignancy that surrounded this man had hung in the air like the lowering threat before a thunderstorm, tormenting Kmicic so he could hardly sleep at night and his days were a waking nightmare.

_And now I walk in the woods with him, when every tree we pass should be his gibbet!_

Recriminations and regrets coiled upon each other in a writhing mass, each poison thought twined with a hundred more. He walked, half-blinded by inner horror, and at times he imagined he walked a road to Hell, trailing in Bogusław’s footsteps.

He did not see the fog that crept through the woods, flowing around the trunks of the trees. He did not note the glances Bogusław cast over his shoulder.

The mists thickened, and the path they took became a meandering animals’ track through deepening underbrush.

It was only when the fog carried the sound of a horse’s jangling harness to Kmicic’s ears that the demonic chorus in his head was silenced.

“Stop!” he whispered to Bogusław. “Don’t move, or make a sound!”

“You might have noticed earlier,” Bogusław said, with mild reproach.

Kmicic paid him no heed for once. He spun, ears straining, trying to pinpoint the source. But the fog muffled and magnified by turns so that he could not tell where the sounds came from, nor how many horses there might be moving through the bracken.

Another sound came clearly then: the short, sharp bark of a dog, and a voice speaking in Polish. But there were traitor Poles in Bogusław’s company. They might well be tracking him with hounds, trying to find their missing prince.

They must not be allowed to find him! Kmicic could not lose him, not when all his hopes of redemption rested in Bogusław’s person.

Suddenly Kmicic heard it clearly: a horse’s hoofbeats trotting down the track towards them.

He wheeled, hair standing on end, and drew his sword, facing Prince Bogusław.

“Run!” he said. “Run or I shall cut your head from your shoulders here and now!”

Bogusław gave him a strange smile whose meaning Kmicic had no time to ponder, and he ran, Kmicic following.

They sprinted down the track, following the twisting, labyrinthine turns. The thought flashed across Kmicic’s mind: what if this maze of briars had somehow been Bogusław’s goal? What if he had intended to come to this place, perhaps to meet with an accomplice? But it that was impossible, surely!

 _Will I suspect him of black magic next?_ he thought wildly.

Kmicic ran, teeth gritted, keeping Bogusław only a few feet in front of him, ears straining for the sound of pursuit behind him. The hound must have caught their scent: it at once began to howl, the sound ringing through the fog.

“Run, damn you!” Kmicic snarled.

At that moment, Kmicic’s foot caught and he fell with a cry of pain. His sabre, not yet tethered to his wrist, flew from his grasp, skittering across the hard, frosted ground. Glancing down in maddened panic he saw a hunter’s snare—heavy cord, deeply-anchored—drawn tight around his ankle with all the force of his flight. He clawed at the line, even as his head turned round towards the unknown pursuer. Then he stared back at Bogusław, but he was not there. He had vanished around the next bend in the briars. The prince had either not heard Kmicic’s fall or had abandoned both Kmicic and his given word.

“Radziwiłł!” Kmicic shouted. “Come back, traitor!”

Silence, with only the baying of the hound and the quick hoofbeats, reverberating in Kmicic’s chest.

“Coward! Forsworn! Are you no better than a common criminal to forsake your oath?” Kmicic raged. “If this is your ally, are you not still bound with your own accursed soul now condemned?”

Then a rider burst through the fog: a man bundled in a peasant’s sheepskin coat, but perched atop what could only be a _Reiter_ ’s mount.

His hound bounded ahead towards Kmicic, yellow teeth bared. Kmicic sprang towards his fallen sabre, but the snare held him fast.

The rider pulled up his horse with inelegant force, making the beast’s eyes roll. But the man was staring down at Kmicic with sullen malice.

“Corner ‘im, Ripper!” the horseman cried to the hound. “And you!” he said to Kmicic, with a snarl worthy of his dog. “You stop your struggling! Here I was thinking I’d caught that damn wolf, but I guess I’ve got an even nastier beast!”

“Who are you?” Kmicic asked. “Are you in the pay of the Swedes?”

“What? Take me for one of your friends, is it?” The stranger cleared his throat and spat. “Not me! I’m a God-fearing Christian, and the worse for you, you fuckin’ unbeliever!”

Kmicic’s heart lightened.

“Then by our lady let me go! I am no Swede, but my companion is more vile a traitor to our Commonwealth than you could believe! He has run on before me, but if you go after him now, he may yet be stopped, and you’ll have done a hero’s deed!”

But instead of springing into action as Kmicic had hoped, the man shook his head and dismounted.

“Oh no,” he said slowly. “I won’t be fooled by that. I heard you shouting for him in Swedish, fluent as though you were born to it. I’ve heard enough of that chatter to know it when I hear it.”

“Swedish?” Kmicic cried in astonishment. Then he realised: he’d been speaking German with Bogusław, as he always did. “No, never! You insult me, countryman. It’s my companion I spoke to. The traitor will not speak Polish! But my bones are made of this earth, even as yours are!”

The peasant shook his head, anger carving deep lines into his weatherbeaten face.

“Oh no, I heard you clear enough. And I heard your little battlecry, too! ‘Radziwiłł’? I know he’s a traitor, and so are you!” He stooped and picked up Kmicic’s sabre, holding it awkwardly but with obvious intent.

“I was crying _to_ him! To Bogusław Radziwiłł! He’s getting away from us every second we waste here!”

“You think I’m a fool? What would he be doing alone in a forest? Oh no, there’re traitors aplenty in this land, sure enough, and if God sent one into my hands I know what to do with ‘im!”

 _Good Christ,_ Kmicic thought, _and is this the death I have earned?_

The peasant came nearer, and Kmicic tried to leap to his feet. But the instant he put weight on his ensnared foot, the ankle gave way beneath him and he barely managed to stay upright. Hobbled though he was, he drew his dagger from his belt, glaring at his opponent.

“I am a nobleman of the Commonwealth! I swear to you on my honour that Radziwiłł was my captive!”

“All the worse!” the peasant howled. “What honour do you have to swear with, eh? You bastards all rolled over for the Swedes like dogs! It’ll be a penance to spill your blood!”

He lunged at Kmicic, at the same time calling to his hound: “Ripper! Ripper, kill! Kill, boy!”

The animal snarled and leapt. Kmicic hurled himself out of the way of both attacks, but the dog followed through, paws striking Kmicic’s chest and bearing him to the ground. Kmicic threw his arm up between his throat and the slavering fangs, at the same time trying to slash with his dagger. In the commotion the horse began to neigh in fright, stamping and snorting, and the peasant sprang away with a curse to seize the reins. At the same instant there was a tremendous crash through the undergrowth, a scream from the peasant, the sound of a heavy impact, and the thud of a limp body against hard earth. Before Kmicic could understand what was happening, the dog above him was borne away by a swinging blow that wrenched the dagger from his hand and shed fragments of bark over his face.

Blinking furiously to clear his eyes, Kmicic could only see a blurry figure looming over him.

_It can’t be!_

But his sight cleared, and Kmicic saw Bogusław standing before him, breathing hard. In his hands the prince had a heavy tree branch held like a quarterstaff. The urbane mask was gone, and in its place was the other truth of Bogusław’s soul: cold, callous violence, and a mind that revelled in its own mastery.

The prince stared down at Kmicic, then took a step forward, hefting the branch.

Kmicic knew he had no hope of reaching his sabre. The only chance was to unbalance Bogusław when he came in close for the killing blow. He waited, breathless, muscles taut and ready to spring.

But Bogusław did not move another step.

In the silence, the dog could be heard whining, limping away through the briars.

“You broke your word!” Kmicic cried.

Bogusław tilted his head.

“Did I?” His voice held its usual velvet disdain, but naked cruelty still ruled his face. “I do not think so.”

“You ran!”

“I followed your orders. And have I not now saved your life?”

“For your own purposes!”

In lace and wig, Bogusław might have responded with a courtier’s shrug. But now he merely gave Kmicic a slow smile, saying: “Why else?”

“You gave me an oath!”

“You’ve no call to reproach me with that, Sir Cavalier. You gave my family an oath. And _I_ have not yet even broken the one I gave you.” Bogusław kept his eyes on Kmicic, but he moved slowly to where the sabre lay on the ground. With an elegant motion he caught the sabre with the toe of his boot and kicked it up into his hand. “I have a proposal.”

“I reject it!”

Bogusław laughed at that: a low, sleek sound that played over Kmicic’s nerves.

“You have no choice but to hear me out, so listen now: I do indeed intend to break my oath. But I give you a chance to buy back your honour. I propose a trade, as it were.”

“How could _you_ give me back honour, dishonourable as you are?”

“Do blessings from corrupt priests not still count in your faith? No, no: listen, _mon cher chevalier_. If you release me from my oath not to escape, I shall release you of your oath to my family.”

A cold horror crept into Kmicic’s heart, stealing the fire from his defiance.

“I will be leaving regardless,” Bogusław continued, “as I do not particularly care what you think.” He paused, considering, then added: “Though I do have one question.”

“What question could that be?” Kmicic hissed.

“Why on earth did you agree to take me into the forest in the first place?” He seemed genuinely curious. “Or why did you not bring reinforcements with you? Some of your bumbling companions, perhaps?”

 _Alone in the forest together._ That had been the thought, inchoate and unformed though it was. _Alone in the forest together. Alone with my demons, like St. Anthony in the desert. And with Lucifer himself for company! Why? Oh God, why? Why did I—_

“I would not have you whispering your treasons in other men’s ears!” Kmicic cried, willing to admit to any madness rather than listen to the madness within. “I would let my men sleep with untroubled dreams!”

“And do I trouble your dreams, fair cousin?” His voice was liquor and poison in Kmicic’s ears.

Kmicic’s heart stuttered and stopped. He opened his mouth, but his throat so crowded with admissions he dared not voice that no sound could escape.

“What might induce you to accept my proposal, I wonder?”

“Get on your horse and be gone!” he cried. “If you will go, then go! And be damned as an oathbreaker, even as I am!”

“Are you already damned?” Bogusław asked softly, and Kmicic shivered at his smile.

“I know I am,” Kmicic whispered.

“There is nothing in my bargain that tempts you, then?” The prince took one step closer, but approaching Kmicic at an angle so the prone man might not use his feet to kick.

“Nothing that is worth the trade!”

“Yet to break my oath is but a small sin for me, by your reckoning. What I offer you would be release from one of the greater stains on your soul, would it not? Would you not rather trade that greater sin for a lesser?”

“What lesser sin?”

Bogusław slid his sabre under Kmicic’s jaw, lifting his chin with the point.

“Kill me and be done with it.” Kmicic raised his head higher, baring his throat. Death seemed cleaner.

“Kill you?” Bogusław repeated with mild astonishment. “You misunderstand me, _chevalier_. Your death is not what I desire. Not like this.”

“What then?” Kmicic could hardly hear his own words over the pounding of his heart.

“I asked you to take me into the woods, and you suited yourself to my whim. Do so again: release me from my oath.”

“No!”

“Release me.”

“Never! You will be damned, but if I can drag you one inch deeper in hell, then I do so gladly, even at the cost of my own soul!”

“Is _that_ what you want?” Bogusław’s face took on a thoughtful, appraising expression. With a quick motion of his wrist he dropped the point of the sabre and brought the flat of it against Kmicic’s cheek, forcing his head to turn. He considered what he saw. Then he repeated the motion, forcing Kmicic’s head to the other side. Kmicic swallowed, feeling the rough scratch of the sabre’s edge against stubble. Death lay cold against his cheek, and damnation lurked in Bogusław’s smile.

“What if I offer you the chance to add another sin to my name?” Bogusław asked.

That dark gaze lay like a weight on Kmicic’s chest, making breath come sharp and shallow. Lightheaded, he hardly heard Bogusław’s next words: “Let me take what I want from you.”

“I—” Kmicic felt fire flickering across his skin. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you?”

“No! No, I don’t! I don’t know anything of what you’re saying, monster!”

 _“Ma foi,”_ Bogusław said with soft amusement. “I see I have distressed you deeply. I know you can lie far better than that. Have you not fooled me before? But now…” The sabre’s point drifted slowly down Kmicic’s cheek—a vicious parody of a caress. “If I ask if you desire me, I rather think I should enjoy how transparent a lie I shall hear.”

“Stop this! I don’t—”

“Yes, you do.”

The sabre’s edge pressed sharp, though Kmicic could hardly feel its bite.

Bogusław’s words seemed to wrap round him like a spell: “Do you think me blind?”

“It’s a sin,” Kmicic whispered. Why could he voice no denial but that?

“It is. One, I think, you have tasted before. Oh, now there I hit the mark! You blush, Sir Cavalier.”

Kmicic blinked away tears of fury. Shame burned in him, but he could not even look away to hide it from the prince’s gaze.

“Give me what I want,” Bogusław urged, eyes glittering. “Give in.”

“What makes you think I would ever submit to—”

“Don’t play the coy maiden with me: it is unbecoming, and is a lie besides.” He bent low over Kmicic, tilting his head back still further with the sabre point.

Cold. Cold, the steel against his flesh. Cold, the hard ground beneath him. But Kmicic felt none of it, not when Bogusław’s eyes seared him to his soul.

“You ask what makes me think you would submit?” the prince purred. “Why, simply that I can see how much you want it. How much you want me.”

“I hate you!” Kmicic snarled, trembling in every limb. The whites showed around his blue eyes.

“And how should those two things be exclusive?”

 _“No!”_ Kmicic could only cling to this last, desperate denial.

“It is not courage to resist me; it is courage to accept me. It is your duty, even. Drag me to hell, as you say you long to. I will release you from your vow to my family.” He smiled, dark and sweet as opium. “And to give you your desire, I shall seal the pact with a kiss.”

“No! I will not do this!”

“Yes,” Bogusław said simply, “you will.”

Faster than a serpent, Bogusław sprang, straddling Kmicic’s prone body. He seized Kmicic’s hands in an iron grip, pinning them above Kmicic’s head, with all his weight leaning into the hold.

“I will take this,” he hissed, eyes black. “I will have you! I know you want me to. Let me free you of the burden of choice.”

Kmicic thrashed under him, fighting to win free.

“You can tell your confessor that you fought me. You may tell him that I forced you.” Bogusław's lips were hot on Kmicic's throat, voice hoarse with desire. “We both know it will be a lie: another lesser sin I give you in trade for a greater one. Will that please you, my poor, hungry darling? Will that ease your conscience?”

“No,” Kmicic whispered, going still. “I am… I am not a coward. I will take no gift of lies from your hand!”

Bogusław froze.

Slowly, he sat up. Exultation shone in his face. He shifted his grip so one hand pinned both Kmicic's wrists. Whether that would have been enough to restain Kmicic, neither ever knew. He dropped the sabre, raising a hand to trace the line of Kmicic’s jaw.

“My God,” Bogusław said, marvelling. “So you admit you want me.”

“Yes,” Kmicic rasped, tears in his eyes. He longed to shut them, to hide himself from that dark gaze. “Oh God! _Oleńka… Michał…_ I wanted—”

“But they're not here,” Bogusław chided gently. “I am. And you want _me_.” His hand slid down Kmicic’s body. “Give me your surrender, and I will grant you all you desire, and more.”

Kmicic’s mind reeled as a hundred fantasies began to unfold in reality. His hips bucked up against Bogusław’s touch.

“Please.” The word burst from him before thought could interpose, a soft whine that stole Bogusław's breath away.

“Beg again,” the prince commanded.

“Please!” Kmicic said. The chaos within seemed to have intensified to such a height that his had mind shied away from it at last, slipping away into grateful submission.

“Again. What do you want?”

“I want you.” The command given, it was rapture to obey. Kmicic did not have to think. There was no choice to make. He wanted what he wanted and all he need do to claim it was to surrender. It was what Bogusław wanted. It was what he wanted. “Touch me, please!”

“Very good,” Bogusław said, kissing him. His hand began to move. “Now, do you see how I shall reward you?”

Kmicic gasped, shuddering with horror and pleasure.

“Please,” he said, unasked. “Please! Oh God, I’m already ruined! Already damned!” His chest began to shudder with panicked sobs. “Please, take what’s left! Take me.”

“That’s right,” purred Bogusław. “But now you've given yourself to me. No more guilt can fall on you, no more blame. Hush,” he said, stroking Kmcic’s cheek. “Hush now. Look at me.”

With a grateful whimper, Kmicic obeyed.

Triumph coursing through him, Bogusław drank in the sight of Kmicic’s abandon: the young cavalier's flushed cheeks and the blissful vacancy in his eyes.

“You see how simple it is? You have admitted what you want, and now I will give it to you generously. Oh, _so_ generously, fair cousin. Now I grant you the freedom that is surrender.”

Kmicic moaned as one enduring the torments of the damned, closing his eyes. His chest began to heave again, panic and pain rising.

He could see them there in the darkness behind his lids: Oleńka’s cold incomprehension, and Michał’s appalled disappointment.

He must have cried out their names, because Bogusław’s voice spoke again.

“No,” Bogusław said. “Look at me. I will not have you thinking of Billewiczówna or of Wołodyjowski. Only I am here. Only I will give you what you long for. Only I can give you peace, if only for this moment. Look at me.”

And Kmicic did. His mouth worked in silent anguish, but he stared into Bogusław's eyes and let himself slip back into their depths with a sigh.

“Good,” Bogusław said, stroking the golden hair. “That's right.”

And, slowly, peace settled over Kmicic’s face.

Bogusław’s smile softened, kind venom in his words as he said: “Good, good. Now tell me what more you want.”

“I…”

“And we are both soldiers.” Bogusław kissed his cheek. “Let me hear it so: crude and in your mother tongue.”

“Fuck me.” Kmicic’s body burned under Bogusław’s hand.

“Very good,” Bogusław kissed his lips, hard and hungry. “But alas, I do not think I can grant that one request. You may not believe me, but I have very little interest in... damaging you, at least irreparably. And without something to—”

“Sword oil,” Kmicic heard himself say. “My coat.”

 _“Really?”_ Bogusław’s astonished voice asked.

His hand roamed Kmicic’s body, lingering as he sought.

“Oh, _cher chevalier,_ how happy you make me. And did you hope for this, when you brought that with you on our little journey into the forest?”

Kmicic bit down hard on his lip, shaking his head with all the violence he wished to give to a denial he could not voice.

Bogusław bent, biting Kmicic's lip harder still, until both tasted blood. He raised the phial of oil to Kmicic’s sight.

“I asked you a question: did you think of me fucking you, when you slipped this into your pocket?”

“Yes.” Kmicic shuddered as the confession escaped him.

“Whore.” Bogusław kissed his brow. “If I were trying to woo you, I would say that I had rather use scented ointments for our first time, and bed you on silken sheets. But we are being honest with each other, are we not? So I must tell you that would be a lie. I want you like this: like a camp follower taken on the side of the road.”

Kmicic let out a despairing moan, staring up at skeletal trees like ghosts amongst the mist. Was this really what he'd fallen to? Had all his hopes of redemption already proven only that—insubstantial hopes?

Hope was ephemeral, fleeting. A future bliss was beyond imagining, a fantasy he conjured up to help him fall asleep. When he slept, he had other fantasies.

_Oh God, why is this the dream that comes true?_

“Now, now, none of that.” A hand seized his chin. “Look at me.”

Bogusław’s face was one of contrasted beauties: the lips too delicate, the eyes too hard. The shaven head that had once worn wigs had grown out to a bristling stubble that leant feral menace to the fine lines of his face.

“I love how you fight, dear one, but you only cause yourself more pain. Do you think you deserve it, all that pain?”

Kmicic nodded.

“ _Ah, mon chevalier, vous me blessez profondément.”_ The prince seemed to be slipping ever more often from German into French. “That is not yours to judge anymore. That is a burden you have given me, don’t you see?” He ran a finger over Kmicic’s cheek, brushing away a tear.

“Now tell me: how many men have you been with?”

The question was so appalling that it wrenched a sob from Kmicic’s chest that he had not even known he was holding back.

“None of those coy protestations, my dear. There's no need for it. We both know better.”

Kmicic shook his head. But Bogusław did not seem to understand.

“How many men have fucked you?” the prince pressed, kissing his temple. “Tell me.”

“No one!”

Bogusław's face was mere inches from Kmicic's, and they had gone far beyond lies. Yet he scoffed, even as he looked truth in its wide, blue eyes.

“You cannot expect me to believe that,” he said. Bogusław’s voice sounded strangely false in his own ears, even if Kmicic did not hear it.

“Kisses,” Kmicic protested. “Kisses, and hands, and mouths. But never more, and never… never with names!”

“And so I would be the first man you’ve done more with?” Bogusław grasped for control of the scene even as it slipped through his hands.

“Yes!”

 “I can't believe that!” This time, Bogusław did not lie. This man did not _respond_ as one who’d known nothing of this kind. How could he be so willing? Why would he consent to do this, and with a man he did not trust?

“Why can’t you believe me?” Kmicic demanded. The glazed, desperate look was fading, and suddenly Bogusław did not like to think that Kmicic should see him like this.

“Because” he answered cruelly, “only a slut would bring oil into the woods in the hopes that I might fuck him there.”

Kmicic let out a sharp breath, like one who tries to absorb a blow in silence.

“Believe what you will,” he said. “I want you! Surely that's all that can matter to you?”

“To be sure,” Bogusław agreed, and kissed him. That must be all that mattered.

Yet Kmicic met his lips so sweetly.

The fire Bogusław had expected was gone. The steel edge of pleasure had been blunted, and now there was nothing sharp to savour, no thrill to taste.

There was only Andrzej Kmicic, kissing him as though hate and love might not be two different things.

He ran his hand roughly over Kmicic's body, clutching at him, trying to find familiar ground.

“You like it when you’re told what to do, do you not?” Bogusław did not truly need to ask, not when he knew the answer. But Kmicic’s whimpered sigh against his skin was a sweeter assent than any he could have imagined. “Then undo your belt.”

Kmicic felt his hands released. Slowly, he lowered his arms, and he found them encircling Bogusław’s shoulders.

“Your belt. _Now.”_

Kmicic could not be allowed to hold him like that.

With one hand, Kmicic fumbled with the clasp. The other lingered where it had first fallen, pressed between Bogusław’s shoulderblades.

“Take it off!”

Kmicic obeyed, writhing to pull the full length of it free before casting it aside.

Bogusław rose to his knees. As he did so, Kmicic’s arm dropped from his shoulders to his waist. The weight of that arm was still too light to be a true hold that Bogusław could resent, but still _there._

Ignoring it with an effort of will, the prince let his hands follow familiar, violent motions: tearing open Kmicic’s coat, yanking down his trousers. Soon the man was laid out on his own cloak, with only a shirt between him and the cold sky—apart from the boot and trousers caught in the snare still tight around one ankle.

Kmicic’s eyes were wide, fixed on Bogusław’s face with an expression so intense that it should have blistered.

“God,” Bogusław breathed, fascinated, “how has no one fucked you before this?”

Even through the haze of surrender, Kmicic’s mad defiance shone through in one flashing, reckless smile.

“You will be mine,” Bogusław said suddenly. He grabbed Kmicic’s hips, fingers digging in to leave bruises. “Mine, do you understand?”

When Bogusław’s nails broke the skin Kmicic whimpered, and Bogusław stopped his mouth with a kiss.

“No cause, no purpose but what I choose to do with you.” Bogusław said, slurring the words against Kmicic’s lips. “Mine, and mine alone.”

Kmicic tensed beneath him with a soft cry of protest—and was that not as delectable as his surrender?

“No one else’s,” Bogusław told him.

He snatched up the oil, pouring it over his fingers.

“Not your king’s.”

He stroked slick fingers over skin, relishing the sharp gasp and the way Kmicic tried, on instinct, to draw away from his touch.

“Not my cousin’s.”

Kmicic’s mouth sought his own, whether in passion or for reassurance, it did not matter. Bogusław kissed him back, dizzy with the sweetness of the other man’s mouth. His fingers brushed over their goal, and this time Kmicic did not pull away. No, not at all: he _moaned_.

“And”—Bogusław hissed as pressed the first finger in, smiling as Kmicic convulsed beneath him with a wail—“certainly not Wołodyjowski’s.”

 _“Christ!”_ Kmicic cried. His arm was still around Bogusław’s waist, and now he pulled him closer, though Bogusław could feel him trembling.

“Shh, softly,” Bogusław said, showering his throat and cheeks with kisses. “I’m already in you, aren’t I? Do you feel me?”

“Yes!” Disbelieving, uncomprehending, but _God_ so eager. His eyes had closed, and Bogusław could see the dusty gold of his lashes against his skin.

“That is one. And you are already doing so well.”

“Oh.” Kmicic turned his head, brushing his lips over Bogusław’s skin. Then, again: _“Oh!”_

“There, you see?” Bogusław kissed him again. “And I hardly have to do anything,” he murmured in Kmicic’s ear, “not when you’re moving like that.”

The other man froze, only then made aware of how he’d been grinding against Bogusław’s hand.

“No, no, don’t stop, sweet.” Bogusław smiled. “You are quite perfect, just like this.”

“I want to be!” Kmicic’s words were a blissful, glowing sigh. “Oh, whatever you want me to be, I want that!”

 _“Putain!”_ Bogusław whispered suddenly, dragging his nails across Kmicic’s neck. He’d said the word to so many whom he’d fucked; saying it now proved to Bogusław that Kmicic would only be one among them.

And Kmicic was soldier enough to know that word, too.

That fleeting look of perfect happiness was gone. But in its place was something none the less potent for being a darker joy.

The prince watched, enchanted, as Kmicic shut his eyes and arched into Bogusław’s touch with a thankful sob.

 _“Salope,”_ Bogusław breathed, and Kmicic shivered to hear such hunger in his voice.

“Please!” Kmicic’s lips twisted in an unhappy curve.

“‘Please’? What? Do you expect me to stop now? Is that what you want, now you understand what I will do with you?” This was what Bogusław knew. This he understood. And it was purest delight to deny it.

Kmicic shook his head.

“What then?” Bogusław licked Kmicic’s lips. “Speak! Or have I found a way to stop that tongue of yours at last?”

The other man’s eyes snapped open. Faster than thought, he grabbed Bogusław’s wrist and shook hard.

“How many fingers do you need?” Kmicic demanded, desperate, almost incoherent.

“What? Release me!” Bogusław twisted his wrist free, but Kmicic caught at his fingers, crushing them close in his hand.

“How many fingers do you need to use? How many do I need, before you can fuck me?” He was fairly panting with the effort of speech, and the hand that held Bogusław’s shook.

“Hardly two hands’ worth!” Bogusław said, eyebrows raised. “But I suppose I thank you for the compliment. And I _should_ like both at my disposal.”

“Then do it! Make me ready! Do it or—” His threat was cut off in a cry that was very nearly a scream.

“I am disposed to be generous,” Bogusław said, working the new fingers deeper, despite Kmicic’s wildly twitching hips. He nipped hard at his lover’s throat. “But do not forget that I am not known for my generosity.”

“God, _yes!_ ”

“Was that what you were begging for? Was that what you wanted?”

“You—you know it was!” Kmicic was writhing against him, hands pulling blindly at Bogusław’s clothes, nails scraping over the stubble of his scalp.

Bogusław was suddenly achingly aware of how hard he himself was, and how much he longed to see what he might yet draw out of Andrzej Kmicic.

Yet Bogusław was a politician and strategist, as well as a soldier. He could wait.

And he did make Kmicic wait.

It was as well that they had walked deep, deep into the forest, for Kmicic’s pleas might have brought any number of companions down on their heads, only to find their beloved commander screaming for Bogusław to fuck him.

“I think,” Bogusław said after an exquisite interval, “you’re more than prepared. Don’t you?”

A whimper met this pronouncement, and though pleasant, that had not been nearly the response Bogusław desired.

“My sweet, I should like—”

Kmicic suddenly reached out and caught Bogusław’s face in his hands. For one breathless instant Kmicic held him, gazing at him with that impossibly sharp focus—all the more shocking for being the opposite of his usual whirling chaos.

 _It’s him,_ Kmicic thought, riveted by each line of this man’s face. _His hands. His mouth. His eyes. All of him. God, I can have this! I can have him!_

He wanted Bogusław inside him. It did not matter how. He would have breathed Bogusław into his lungs if he could. He would have let him into his soul, had the prince asked.

Bogusław felt himself drawn down into blue eyes and, for a moment, he let himself be pulled under. For a moment, he let himself drown.

When he came up for air, both were breathless.

Kmicic clutched at his back, arching languidly against him. He sighed, and all that was in that sigh made Bogusław crave to mark every inch of Kmicic’s skin.

Slowly, Bogusław shook off Kmicic’s hold.

With infinite care Bogusław withdrew his fingers, watching every minute flicker of need on the other man’s face.

Bending over Kmicic’s bare, heaving chest, Bogusław pressed a soft kiss to Kmicic’s breastbone, lips tickled by the curling golden hairs.

“You’ve done so very well, and now it’s time for you to have all you’ve desired,” Bogusław said, kissing above where Kmicic’s heart hammered. “Put your leg over my shoulder, sweet one.”

Kmicic tried to lift his right leg, but that was still ensnared, the strong cord tight around his booted foot, the end anchored in the earth.

“The other one, perhaps?”

Bogusław knelt upright and caught Kmicic’s leg as he raised it, hooking it over his shoulder.

“Are you ready?”

Kmicic’s world reeled around him, and every atom of his being blazed with a fire that should incinerated all it touched. But Bogusław was holding him, pinning him with dark, commanding eyes. He could hear himself babbling pleas, and maybe they were not even words. But then he felt a blunt heat pressed against his body, and he wept with a need as fierce as hellfire.

As Bogusław thrust inside him, a harsh, animal grunt escaped the prince’s lips. Yet it was utterly drowned out by Kmicic’s own cry, so sharp and loud that it must surely have torn his throat. The prince did not move after that, the better to drink in the sight: Kmicic was panting as though he’d run a race, eyes fixed on Bogusław as though looking upon a saint or a demon. When Bogusław moved his hips again, pleasure ripped through Kmicic’s body, and he groaned like a man under the lash.

“Oh my _God!”_

“That is, you should know, rather what I thought might happen.”

Bogusław thrust again, harder this time, eyes watching Kmicic’s face. Kmicic thrashed his head, his flushed cheeks making the blue of his eyes all the brighter. The man fell back, hands clawing at Bogusław’s sides, helpless as he was given all he wanted.

“Christ! Oh Christ, yes!”

“You want more? You should know by now that you only have to beg for it to be given.”

The prince rolled his hips, and Kmicic threw his whole weight back towards him with all the strength of his body.

“Bogusław, please!”

Pleasure ran in a shivering arc down the prince’s spine. He eased into an unhurried rhythm, enjoying each gasp and whimper.

“Say you’re mine.”

“Yours!” The cry burst instantly from his lips, but Kmicic clapped a hand to his mouth as soon as he’d uttered it, as if he wished he could hold it back.

“None of that.” Bogusław took Kmicic’s wrist and pressed it firmly to the ground. When he removed it, Kmicic held the offending limb there as though it had been bolted to the earth, trembling as he stared up into Bogusław’s eyes.

“If you disobey me, I will stop.”

“No. No, please! I need this! I need you!”

There was something hunted in Kmicic’s eyes, but Bogusław did not know if he himself was what Kmicic feared. Then he chided himself for thinking that he cared.

“I’m yours.” Kmicic’s words washed over Bogusław like a wave, and he savoured each one like wine. “I’m yours. You’ve made me yours. I can’t… I can’t think! And it doesn’t matter!”

“No,” Bogusław replied, a little breathless, “it does matter. It is everything. It is perfection. As are you.”

Bogusław glanced down between their bodies. The taut muscles of the other man’s body tensed as he drove himself hard against Bogusław, taking him in, grinding against him as if he still craved every inch Bogusław could give him and more. Every languid movement elicited cries drawn from somewhere deep inside Kmicic’s soul, far too raw to be any kind of whoreish performance.

“But what a slut you are,” Bogusław said with adoring relish. The other man might have been on the brink of oblivion as much as pleasure.

“Yours!” Kmicic’s grasping hands had turned weak, his body pliant under Bogusław’s touch.

“Yes,” the prince agreed, and if he was beginning to lose composure, it no longer mattered. He had everything he wanted in this moment. He shut his eyes, listening to the smack of skin against skin, and to the desperate moans as Kmicic took him in with desperate eagerness, filthy and exquisite. “Yes, you are. Mine.”

Each thrust sent tremors through Kmicic in waves, each one crested by cries that drove Bogusław on. The pace changed at once, going far beyond any hope of restraint, brutal and animalistic. And as much as Bogusław relished it, Kmicic was just as eager.

 _“Ah,”_ Bogusław moaned, and thrust hard enough that Kmicic’s head snapped back, “ _tu me fais sentir bien_ —God, so good!”

Kmicic clawed at any part of Bogusław he could reach—hands, arms, waist—urging him on. Catching one of those hands, Bogusław pressed it hard against Kmicic’s chest.

“Play with yourself,” he commanded, the smooth voice choked with arousal.

“I don’t…” Anguish racked Kmicic’s countenance, a look of such total confusion that Bogusław knew he wasn’t lying.

“Like this.”

He flicked one fingernail across a nipple, then gasped as Kmicic drove himself down onto Bogusław’s cock with such force that the prince might have fallen back, unbalanced, had he not been anchored under the weight of Kmicic’s leg.

Kmicic’s mouth was open in a shocked “o”. Another echoing cry burst from him as Bogslaw pinched, and Kmicic arched off the ground, eyes wide, staring into Bogusław’s face with an ecstasy unmoored from any reality other than gratification.

“I can’t believe...” Bogusław gasped. “God, this _is_ your first time, beyond doubt but—oh Christ— _tu as été si vilain_ —I’ve never seen anything—”

But his words were cut off as Kmicic began to obey his command, first clumsily mimicking what Bogusław had done, then beginning to match the movement of his fingers to each thrust. The perfect, tight heat of Kmicic’s body around him, bucking into him, was shredding Bogusław’s willpower, but he knew he desired one last thing.

Adjusting his position, panting with the effort of control, he thrust with a purpose. The response was beautiful beyond imagining, beyond anything Bogusław had yet seen.

“Please, please! Do that again!” Kmicic’s eyes were blank with ecstasy.

“What,” Bogusław asked, and aimed for that particular spot again. “This?”

“Oh!” The word seemed limned in carnal fire. “Oh God, oh God, how can anything feel so good?”

“Because I can be generous, sweet. Now let go. Let go of it all.”

Bogusław grinned as the other man screamed. Kmicic’s hands still stroked his own chest in frantic, broken movements, obedient to command. If he was still begging, it had gone beyond words. He was merely willing and sobbingly grateful for every stroke. Tears ran from his eyes from rapture so keen it cut to the quick, slicing beneath skin, piercing marrow and soul.

When his climax came, it was everything Bogusław could have dreamed: a perfect cataclysm of convulsing limbs, sweat on skin, golden hair in chaos, and his name on Kmicic’s lips like a worshipper’s cry. On and on it went, the syllables of his name drawn out, wavering as Bogusław continued to thrust, his hand working Kmicic’s cock until his fingers were slick with seed and the other man twitched under his touch.

At last, Kmicic slid from the height of bliss. With that last surrender of control he sighed, laying his head on his arm, eyes-half closed, fixed on Bogusław in wondering adoration.

 “Oh God,” Kmicic whispered. The last syllable was drawn out, torpid and heavy.

But Bogusław had not finished. He seized Kmicic’s sweat-damp hair and the other man’s eyes flew open. There was nothing left of fear there, hardly anything left of pain. A euphoric smile, sweetly tender, lit up his face.

Kmicic already knew what to say: “Yours. I’m yours.”

And he knew to say it again—over and over, in something that went far beyond obedience. Each word was stunning, devastating rapture in Bogusław’s ears. All restraint gone, Bogusław fucked with atavistic violence, and Kmicic’s soft, sleepy groans of pleasure in response were too beautiful to withstand.

When he came, Bogusław bit down hard into the soft flesh of Kmicic’s thigh and the other man’s final “Yours!” rang through the forest like the cry of a damned soul released to Heaven.

 _Mine,_ Bogusław thought, as each spasm tore through him. _Mine._

In the reverberating silence, Bogusław withdrew and gathered the other man greedily into his arms

But, once he held him, there was peace. There was a kiss that lasted long, long after their heartbeats had quieted, and the measure of their breathing was even.

Bogusław broke the kiss, bending his head to trace up the column of Kmicic's throat with his tongue, savouring the salt taste of sweat.

Then Prince Bogusław Radziwiłł leaned back, staring down at the man he had just fucked. Amidst the sombre hues of the cold forest, Kmicic’s golden hair and blue eyes seemed the only bright things in all that dreary world. Bogusław pulled him closer, wrapping his cloak around them.

Kmicic was trembling. But Bogusław had the unsettling sensation that something had shaken loose within his own breast. His brows drew together. He smoothed down the tousled fair hair, then—driven by obscure impulse—he let his hand drift down, covering Kmicic’s eyes. He was alone with his thoughts, for only a moment. Yet whatever he’d hoped to achieve by this, he quickly moved his hand aside again.

“Bogusław?”

The other man raised his hand, brushing over the hollow of Bogusław’s temple, coming to rest at the back of his neck. His swordsman’s calluses scratched over the bristles of Bogusław’s hair, and the prince shivered as Kmicic’s fingers moved in ceaseless patterns. Could the man never be still?

Yet what fascination would he hold, were he not as he was?

 _Too quick to anger, too quick to love. All feeling and fire. Which makes him a fool,_ Bogusław thought. _But if that fire were mine..._

“What are you thinking?” Kmicic whispered in Polish.

Bogusław was seized by a strange compulsion to put all he felt into words. Yet he could not say them to Andrzej Kmicic. With a twist of a smile, he bent and kissed Kmicic’s lips. Then, eyes darkly pleased at Kmicic’s reaction, he began to sing:

_“Qu’un rival vienne devant moi,_  
_Vous témoigner quelle est sa foi,_  
_Et conter l’état de sa peine,_  
_N’est-ce pas désespérer?”_

_My faith,_ Bogusław thought, _if those eyes were the sea what pure waters they would be, for all their storms._

Close as they were, he could see each facet, every vein of grey and cobalt that made up their matchless blue.

 _“J’adore quand tu me regardes comme ça,”_ Bogusław said softly, cupping Kmicic’s cheek in his hand.

“I don’t understand.” Kmicic spoke Polish again; he seemed to have forgotten German. “What did you say? You said so much, before. I knew those words.”

Kmicic swallowed, troubled by memory.

All other tongues abandoned Bogusław, and he found Polish coming tripping off his tongue: “You are so beautiful like this.”

The blue eyed widened and in that moment, Andrzej Kmicic had never been more so breathtaking. His arms encircled Bogusław's neck, and the prince found himself kissing a man who seemed to wish to pour himself into Bogusław's mouth, to crawl inside him and live in the red hollows of his heart. Kmcic's lip split open again, and Bogusław savoured the sweet iron taste of it.

 _Beautiful:_ it was still too small a word.

“Do you love me?” Bogusław asked.

Kmicic pulled away. Confusion clouded his face. Blood welled from a half-moon bite in his lower lip.

“Love you?” Kmicic repeated.

He seemed to return to some sense of himself then: cradled in Bogusław’s arms in a grey wood, ankle trapped in a snare, with a man lying dead not six feet from them.

_“Love you?”_

“Ah, I see.” A flicker of bitter fire sprang up in Bogusław's breast. “I shall take that as a ‘no’, then?”

“I could never!” Kmicic pulled his arms from around Bogusław’s neck. “Would I love a viper that poisons me?”

“Men have loved stranger things,” Bogusław said mildly.

“How could you even ask—”

Bogusław did not care to hear this.

When he kissed Kmicic again, he felt the other man’s hands press in protest against his chest.

 _Softly,_ he told himself. _Softly._

Yet as the kiss deepened, the resistance in those hands ebbed. Longer, and sweeter each kiss came, with Kmicic’s open mouth pliant and willing against his own. Willing, except—

Salt tears: a familiar taste, though not on this man’s lips.

Bogusław broke the kiss, searching Kmicic’s face.

“Don’t,” Kmicic whispered, when Bogusław’s eyes met his. “You can take everything else from me, but love… This is not love!”

 _“Ah, mon cher,_ how do men such as we know what love is?”

“I am nothing like you!” The other man’s cry held a razor-edge note, almost like fear, almost like madness. “I know what love is! It is nothing like this!”

“Is it not?” Bogusław pressed his lips to Kmicic’s temple, then to his cheek, and he hummed as Kmicic turned his head, meeting Bogusław’s mouth with his own.

“Is this not love?” he asked, and caught Kmicic’s ear between his teeth.

“It can’t be,” Kmicic gasped.

“How certain you are.”

“I know this truth! You may steal all my other truths from me, but not this one!”

“A pity. I suppose we shall see.”

Bogusław shifted as he held Kmicic, freeing one arm. He kissed Kmicic hard, revelling in the way even that brief touch made the other man melt against him all over again.

As Bogusław pulled away, he saw the loss and confusion in Kmicic’s face. Yet if Kmicic had any flicker of warning, it came too late.

The hilt of Kmicic’s own sabre struck his head like a thunderbolt. He collapsed, limp in Bogusław’s lap.

“And then again,” Bogusław said regretfully, “perhaps you are right.”

With some difficulty, he hastily dressed Kmicic in his clothes again, wrapping a cloak beneath the man’s prone body. In his experience, knockout blows seldom lasted for long unless the wounded party was grievously harmed, and Bogusław had been sure not to hurt Kmicic nearly so badly as that.

Indeed, even as Bogusław vaulted into the saddle of the peasant’s stolen horse, he heard Kmicic moan.

The prince paused, casting back one long, lingering glance.

“Traitor!” Kmicic choked. He tried to crawl towards Bogusław, hands like claws on the cold earth. But the snare—still tight around his now swollen ankle—caught him and he gasped.

“Farewell, Andrzej Kmicic,” Bogusław said softly. “I do hope we may meet again.”

“You gave me your word!” Kmicic said, and hated that there were tears in his eyes. “On your soul—!”

“So I did. But, for my part, I release you from your oath to my family.”

“You… you…” Kmicic seemed beyond the power of speech.

“You will find your dagger in your belt. Do not die in the woods. That would be sad waste.”

Bogusław made the war horse pivot like a dancer, turning its head away down the path.

“Wait!” Kmicic croaked.

Bogusław looked back over his shoulder.

“I free you,” Kmicic said. His face was very pale, and had he not already been on the ground, he surely must have fainted. “You are free of your oath. Go.”

Their eyes met.

Then Bogusław spurred away, leaving Kmicic alone in the forest with his demons.

**Author's Note:**

> “Qu’un rival vienne devant moi,  
> Vous témoigner quelle est sa foi,  
> Et conter l’état de sa peine,  
> N’est-ce pas désespérer?”
> 
> “If a rival comes and, in my presence,  
> Expresses to you where his affections lie,  
> And tells the tale of his suffering,  
> Can you not understand why I despair?”
> 
> Anonymous French _air de cour_ , ca. 1650–1663.
> 
> * * *


End file.
